Opportunity For OpenAPI-Driven Open Source Testing, Performance, Security, And Other Modules

15 May 2018

I’ve been on five separate government reflated projects lately where finding modular OpenAPI-driven open source tooling has been a top priority. All of these projects are microservice-focused and OpenAPI-driven, and are investing significant amounts of time looking open source tools that will help with design governance, monitoring, testing, and security, and interact with the Jenkins pipeline. Helping government agencies find success as their API journey picks up speed, and the number of APIs grows exponentially.

Selling to the federal government can be a long journey in itself. They can’t always use the SaaS solutions many of us fire up to get the job done in our startup or enterprise lives. Increasingly government agencies are depending on open source solutions to help them move projects forward. Every agency I’m working with is using OpenAPI (Swagger) to drive their API lifecycle. While not all have gone design (define) first, they are using them as the contract for mocking, documentation, testing, monitoring, and security. The teams I’m working with are investing a lot of energy looking for, vetting, and testing out different open source modules on Github–with varying degrees of success.

Ideally, there was an OpenAPI-driven marketplace, or federated set of marketplaces like OpenAPI.Tools. I’ve had one for a while, but haven’t kept up to date–I will invest some time / resources into it soon. My definition of an OpenAPI tool marketplace would be that it is OpenAPI-driven, and open source. I’m fine with there being other marketplaces of OpenAPI-driven services, but I want a way to get at just the actively maintained open source tools. When it comes to serving government this is an important, and meaningful distinction. I’d also like to encourage many of the project owners to ensure there is CI/CD integration, as well as make sure their projects are actively supported, and they are willing to entertain commercial implementations.

While there wouldn’t always be direct commercial opportunities for open source tooling owners to engage with federal agencies, there would be through contractors and subcontractors. Working for federal agencies is a maze of forms and hoop jumping, but working with contractors can be pretty straightforward if you find the right ones. I don’t think you will get rich developing OpenAPI-driven tooling that serves the API lifecycle, but I think with the right solutions, support, and team behind them, you can make a decent living developing them. Especially as the lifecycle expands, and the number of services being delivered grows, the need for specialized, OpenAPI-driven tools to apply across the API lifecycle is only going to increase. Making it something I’ll be writing more stories about as I hear more stories from the API trenches.

I’m going to try and spend time working with Phil Sturgeon (@philsturgeon) and Matt Trask (@matthewtrask) on API.Tools, as well as give my own toolbox some love. If you have an open source OpenAPI-driven tool you’d like to get some attention feel free to ping me, and make sure its part of API.Tools. Also, if you have a directory, catalog, or marketplace of tools you’d like to showcase, ping me as well, I’m all about supporting diversity of choice in the space. I have multiple federal agencies ear right now when it comes to delivering along the API lifecycle, and I’m happy to point agencies and their contractors to specific tools, if it makes sense. Like I said, there won’t always be direct revenue opportunities, but they are implementations that will undoubtedly lead to commercial opportunities in the form of consulting, advising, and development opportunities with the contractors and subcontractors who are delivering on federal agency contracts.